Abstract
This article discusses how the economic insolvency of the contemporary mainstream media makes it particularly vulnerable to manipulation by illiberal political actors. Through a case study of CNN’s 2023 Trump Town Hall event, this article argues that democratic backsliding itself has become a potent constraint structuring news production routines and news decision-making. The metajournalistic discourse about the event maligned the role of CNN in “platforming” the former president, underscoring how platform logics have hijacked newsroom decision-making and news judgment. Journalists and other commentators pointed to the continuing power of Trump to dominate coverage and the continued inability of mainstream media to cover his threat to democracy via traditional norms of press/politics. Because news values continue to prioritize coverage of knowns over unknowns, news production routines highlight politicians with illiberal politics, who are in turn able to use the media’s discursive power to undermine democratic norms.
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